


Flashforward

by BronzedViolets



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ariane Devere rocks, Bottom!Lock, Canon Major Character Death, Coming In Pants, Coming Untouched, First Time, Flashforward - Freeform, I suck at tagging, Logotherapy, M/M, Mycroft is a good brother, Parent!lock, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy, no cannon major character death, swearing John, that would mean they were shot by a cannon, three garridebs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:05:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BronzedViolets/pseuds/BronzedViolets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a short AU fic based on the 2009 TV series Flashforward (based on the amazing 1999 book of the same name by Robert J Sawyer). You don’t need to have seen the show or read the book, but the gist of it is that everyone on the planet loses consciousness for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and sees a vision of their lives 6 months in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashforward

**Author's Note:**

> I unfortunately do not own any of the characters.... 
> 
> This story contains off-screen death during childbirth, if this could be triggering for you please don't read.
> 
> Also a million thanks to Ariane Devere and her transcripts. What an amazing resource she is for the fandom. Also thanks to my friend Styky. You are a total perv but I love you bro. 
> 
> If you are interested you can follow me on Tumblr http://bronzedviolets.tumblr.com/
> 
> ***  
> 2017-03-14 - beta reading done by ConcentratedAwesome
> 
> A million thanks for catching my typos!

_“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”_  
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

***

The Tarmac (Present Day)

“John, there’s something ... I should say; I-I’ve meant to say always and then never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now. There is something I have been meaning to tell you.” Sherlock hesitates, takes a deep breath and then… and then…

 

Northern Ireland (Present Day)

530 miles away, in a manor house on the outskirts of Limavady a madman in a Westwood suit skips up the flagstone steps towards his room. On the table is a laptop waiting for him to input a 12 digit code and announce his triumphant return on every screen in the country. With that thought he is positively squirming with excitement and he incorporates a jaunty little two step dance as he rounds the corner towards the last flight of steps.

 

Baker Street (Six months from now)

John’s first thought is that he has been shot again. One moment he is standing there watching Sherlock and the next he is lying down. He is naked, his face pressed into something silky, body crushed to body, all warm skin on warm skin. His first instinct is to recoil in surprise but his limbs stubbornly do not respond. Ever the doctor, possible diagnoses begin to race through his mind – paralysis, aneurism, hypoxia, dementia, traumatic brain injury. To his growing confusion and no little amount of panic, he feels himself nuzzle forward, his lips finding the nape of the neck in front of him. His nose is flooded with a warm musky smell, lemongrass and tea. John amends the list to include psychosis, hallucination, and acute narcotics intoxication. His increasingly frantic self-diagnosis is derailed by a sharp crackle of static followed by the unmistakable sound of a baby waking. Before he can react, he feels as much as hears a grumble resonate through the body entwined with his.

“I got her last time John; it is without a doubt your turn.”

As he scrambles to make sense of why he is (oh God) spooning Sherlock in his hallucination(?) he feels his face twist into his familiar smile, half chiding, half fond. A passenger in his own body, he slowly clambers off the bed and snags Sherlock’s dressing gown from where it was puddled on the floor, deftly wrapping the too long garment around himself. Incongruously, the act of wearing the other man’s dressing gown shakes him more than the thought that he was just pressed to his friend’s naked form. This casual intimacy makes something clench painfully inside his chest. He surprises himself by wondering with a sharp bite of panic if he has died and this is heaven (hell). As he shuffles out of what is undeniably Sherlock’s room, the last thing he sees before his eyes slip towards the door is Sherlock’s back, the ruins of its once pristine planes and curves illuminated by the marine glow of the street lights and then…

 

The Tarmac (Present Day)

He is looking up at the blue sky of the airfield. Torn between relief and panic, he wonders if he has had a stroke after all. John rolls over with a groan and attempts to push himself upright. His chin is scraped and the blood feels gummy on his face. Sherlock is propped up on his hands and knees a foot away, his eyebrow split open and the blood running freely down his face.

“Jesus- Sherlock, what happened?”

“Mary.” Sherlock gestures wildly past him.

“What?” John snaps, bewildered and still reeling from the hallucination (fantasy?). As John turns, he feels his heart lurch in his chest. Whatever happened, is happening, is bigger than just them. Beyond the tarmac is a world on fire. A plane has crashed into one of the hangars and beyond that he can see oily smoke rising from the motorway. In the middle of the chaos sprawls Mary, hands clutching at her distended stomach, her red coat obscenely cheerful against the cold ground.

“Oh God - the baby.” He lurches towards her, ears ringing, the bizarre dream of domesticity driven from his mind.

The next hour passes in a blur. Despite the fact the world has apparently gone to hell, somehow Mycroft manages to get them to a hospital. Later when John looks back, it is like watching an old film with frames missing. Stilted and skipping ahead. The thread of the plot lost. Snippets of words like “placental abruption” and “preterm labor.” The smell of Mary’s blood, so much blood, as it soaks into the expensive leather of Mycroft’s car seats. The taste of bile in his mouth and the look on Sherlock’s face, grey and haunted.

 

Portland Maternity Hospital (One hour after the event)

The hospital is even worse than the interminable car ride. The corridors are flooded with the walking wounded, the staff themselves battered and bruised. It reminds him of the worst days in Afghanistan.

John has a few scant moments alone with Mary as they wait for an open operating theatre. She clutches his sweating hand in her cold one, and John can't bear to meet her eyes. Instead he looks down at their interlaced hands, her wedding ring clotted with blood and scuffed by her fall onto the tarmac. Unbidden he wonders what Sherlock would conclude about the state of their marriage.

“John?” Her rasp snaps him out of his fugue. There is something in the tone of her voice that he does not recognize. “Abigail Grace Rachelle Ansell.” For a second he cannot parse the phrase.

“Who”- he starts and stops as recognition slams into him. AGRA. He feels like they are trembling on the verge of something awful and he has the terrible conviction that to speak it aloud would make it real.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“John” she starts again but he cuts her off.

“No, no. Mary Watson” he chokes out. “You don’t get to do this. You agreed that you were going to be Mary Watson.” The look she gives him is for a second both terrible and infinitely sad.

“You always were a terrible liar, John. Take care of her. Promise me you will take care of her.”

John is still trying to force words out of his suddenly numb throat when the door bangs open and a harried orderly tells them it is time for the surgery. John can do nothing but stand there frozen and struck dumb as he watches them recede down the corridor and away.

Sherlock finds him standing there stock still a quarter of an hour later. They continue to stand there unspeaking, the weight of the words unsaid crushing them when the surgeon returns bloody and haggard. He explains to John in a hushed voice that the baby is in stable condition but Mary needs to be moved to a critical care unit. John hears the words from a great distance. He nods at the words “haemorrhage" and “no blood left for transfusions” and “disaster.” He nods and he nods and he nods until his head fills up with static and the surgeon goes back to the ward.

Around them London burns and Mary Elizabeth Watson née Morstan dies a second time.

 

Portland Maternity Hospital (Two hours after the event)

John thinks of himself as a man of action, but he is so far removed from that now. He has not felt so helpless, so bloody impotent, since Sherlock called him from the roof of St. Bart’s. He wants to wail, to rend his hair, to punch the wall until he feels his metacarpals fracture and grind themselves to dust. He wants to rush out into the fray and splint broken bones and suture split skin. He wants to find whoever was responsible for this, whatever ‘this’ is, and hear the bullet sing as it splinters their skull. Instead all he can do is stand in the centre of a motherless maternity suite clutching his arms around himself with the grim knowledge that if he lets go he will fly apart.

Sherlock is standing as far away from him as possible without being in the corridor, peering at him as though he is a bomb set to explode. He looks more lost than John can ever remember seeing him. There is something about the vulnerable cast of his face or the set of his shoulders that sparks the memory for him. John’s whole body jerks once as though he has been electrocuted.

“Your back, Sherlock; show me your back” he gasps before he can stop himself.

Sherlock now looks positively alarmed. “I’m fine, you saw, I just hit my head.” He gives a vague half wave to the butterfly bandage crossing his eyebrow.

“God damn it, Sherlock, show - me - your – back.”

Now it is Sherlock’s turn to be dumbstruck, emotions flickering across his face faster than John can read them. John takes a step forward, his teeth clenched so hard that the muscles in his jaw jump.

Face gone blank, Sherlock pivots gracelessly so he is facing the wall and roughly strips off his button-up. In the harsh glare of the hospital’s fluorescent lights it is even worse than John remembered. The static grows and his head fills up with gray until he collapses for the second time that day. This time he sees nothing.

 

Baker Street (One week after the event)

The flat in Hammersmith has burnt to cinders along with the rest of John’s life so he returns to Baker Street a refugee from himself, mourning a wife he was not sure he ever loved. Instead of the indigo darkness of Sherlock’s room, John is back upstairs, his old bed crowded against one wall, a hastily acquired cot flush against the other.

Sherlock does not ask about what he saw in his vision nor does he speak of his own. In return, John tries to hide the hot flush of shame he feels when he thinks of Sherlock’s scars. John may be a coward but he is not stupid. He knows his friend was tortured and upon his return John repaid him with his fists instead of gratitude.

The only bright spot in those grim first days is that Mycroft is able to commute Sherlock’s sentence from the cancelled Serbian mission for MI6 to an unspecified amount of local work for M15. Sherlock never tells him what he ‘meant to say always’ but never had.

By the time the news breaks confirming that the large Hadron collider churning away 574 ft beneath the France–Switzerland border had in all likelihood triggered actual visions of the future, it becomes simply another thing they don't speak of. If John occasionally takes himself in hand, and strokes himself off in the shower while pointedly not thinking of his flatmate, he figures the world owes him this small comfort at least.

 

Baker Street (Four months after the event)

Victoria Watson has been home from the hospital for three and a half months when it happens.

It is early Sunday evening and John is relaxed in his chair reading the paper and sipping a fragrant cup of tea. Sherlock has Victoria tucked under his arm and is carrying her around the flat pointing out various geometric shapes; the door frames are rectangles, an open book describes an acute angle, the elegant hypotenuse of a coffee spoon resting against a saucer. The realization hits him with enough force to punch the breath from his chest. If the blackouts had happened a few minutes later Sherlock’s plane would have crashed. The tea cup slips from his nerveless fingers and black spots begin to dance in his field of vision. He knows on some level that he is having a panic attack but it still feels like he is dying. Head between his knees, he can’t catch his breath and a cold sweat breaks out on his brow. He is on the verge of passing out when he feels strong arms grasping his shoulders.

“Listen to me, John” Sherlock booms. “Inhale to the count of four, exhale to the count of four. One - two -three - four. Now out -one -two - three - four.”

John forces himself to comply, taking shuddering breaths through clenched teeth. After a few gut churning minutes the iron fist around his heart begins to relax and John slowly sits up. Sherlock turns to scoop Victoria back up from her moses basket, takes a deep breath and speaks stiffly as though reading from a script.

“I acknowledge something bad has happened and I would like to listen.”

John could not have been more surprised if Mycroft had waltzed in wearing swim trunks. Sherlock is literally reciting the military’s ‘Ad Hoc Incident Review procedure.’ The absurdity of the situation is enough to crack open the shell of something dark that has been growing inside his chest like a pearl. Every layer formed of pain, loss, and necrotic grief suppressed. For the first time since the hospital John cries. He cries for the Mary Watson who never existed and he cries for Abigail Ansell who he never got to know. He cries for a daughter who will never meet her mother, and he cries for a life he will never have.

When the cathartic tide of grief finally recedes, Sherlock leads him up to bed. The last thing he sees before he drifts off is Sherlock gently laying a sleeping Victoria down in her cot.

Around them, London rebuilds.

 

Baker Street (Five and ½ months after the event)

Mrs. Hudson offered to watch Victoria for the night, and John had gratefully accepted. He loves his daughter with a fierceness he had not expected, but he found he still needed a break at least every fortnight.

John and Sherlock are slouched on the sofa watching one of the classic Bond films when he comes to the staggering realization that despite all that has happened he is happy, actually bone deep happy. The sword of Damocles that was his late wife has been laid down. The blade wrapped and set aside on a dusty shelf of his mind cottage. A part of him will always love her for being there when he was grieving, and a part of him will always hate her for putting a bullet in his dearest friend’s heart. He knows that some nights when sleep can't find him he will take the memory down and explore its sharp edges but the blade has been blunted by time and perspective.

As Sherlock carries on a sarcastic (albeit enthusiastic) critique of unrealistic concussive blast forces in cinema, John is struck by a second realization that he can not remember the last time his flatmate complained of boredom. In fact, in last four months Sherlock had rarely left the flat. Ostensibly he was working MI5 cases on the secure laptop provided by his brother, but more often than not the days are passed with Sherlock in his chair, Victoria cradled in his arms more tenderly than he ever held his violin.

As the night progresses John finds himself watching his flatmate more closely than the film. John could almost believe that Sherlock was happy too. With this small life, with him, and with Victoria. Perhaps Sherlock sensed the strange alchemy of his thoughts because when he turns to meet John’s eyes, the atmosphere of the room changes with the speed of a catalytic reaction.

John is conscious of how close they are sitting and the air is suddenly electric and portentous. He feels drunk on the sense of possibility opening up before him like a flower. John leans forward and his lips find Sherlock’s. With that chaste press of skin on skin, he is lost in the scent of lemongrass and tea and home and does not feel his friend’s body tensing against his until it is too late.

“Stop” Sherlock barks, jumping from the sofa as though he had been scalded.

“Oh God, I thought, I am so sorry.” John scrambles to his feet, frantically scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I... I thought you wanted…”

Before he can finish, Sherlock explodes forward, jabbing him in the chest with an outstretched finger. “Of course I wanted! Are you blind as well as stupid? I don't want it like this, it can’t be just this” he says, his voice breaking. “I am not Mary; I can never be what you want. You can’t do this to me.”

John recoils as though he has been struck. He takes a step back and looks at his friend, really looks for once; the clenched fists, the shine of tears being held back, and he understands. God help him, he understands. John sees with a clarity that cuts, the absolute staggering idiocy of both of them. Even with a window into the future they still had been unable to bloody see it. Taking a gulp of air he takes a slow step forward and softly, softly, brushes a callused finger against Sherlock’s cheek.

“You didn’t know, did you?” John asks gently. “You have no idea what you mean to me. You are not a replacement for Mary. Bloody buggering fuck Sherlock, one word from you and I would have left her.”

In response Sherlock’s face twists into a bitter parody of a smile. “And what would I have said, John? Oh hello Mr. ‘I am not gay’ please leave your pregnant wife and come back to me, fancy a curry? By the way, don’t be terribly surprised if she tries to murder you, woman scorned and all that.”

“Sherlock listen to me, I don't think you understand. It's you, it's always been you. Well no, it's not always been you. Major Sholto and I, we… I mean we almost, oh sod it all - what I am trying to say is that you are not the first man I loved. But I was scared Sherlock, so fucking scared and I never told him, and then I got shot and I lost my chance.”

John talks faster and faster, the words spilling out one on top of the other as Sherlock stands there like a statue. John takes a shuddering breath and continues.

“That first night at Angelo’s you told me you were married to you work, then there was Irene and her bloody phone, and then you were d-gone. I thought that we missed our chance, you understand? But you have to know - know that I have loved you since the first night.” John stops speaking, the words turned to stones in his mouth.

Stunned is not a strong enough word to describe the look on Sherlock’s face. He looks utterly wrecked. “Do you mean that, John?” he says hoarsely. “Tell me you mean that. There is no going back. Do you understand. Losing you again would destroy me.”

John gazes into Sherlock’s eyes and sees the truth. Him, ordinary Doctor John Watson, not the most luminous of men, has the power to do what Moriarty never could: burn the heart out of Sherlock Holmes. The moment stretches between them, hyper-real. Sherlock is back on the roof and this is his note. John knows in his bones that whatever he says next will be the single most important thing he does in this life. In the end there was never a choice.

“God, yes” he whispers.

Their second kiss is nothing like the first. Growling softly, Sherlock grabs his head in his big hands and kisses him so deeply that John feels his cock begin to thicken in response, pleasure sparking deep in his groin. Without knowing how he got there John is backed against the sitting room wall, head thumping against the plaster hard enough to make the lights flicker. Sherlock kisses with the passion and precision he typically saves for experiments and locked room murders. John gasps when he feels a rigid length push against his hip and he pulls away breathing raggedly.

Sherlock was hard, his erection obscenely distorting the lines of his trousers. John feels his own cock surge from semi-erect to full mast with a rapidity that was dizzying.

“I didn’t… I didn't know if you felt this sort of thing.”

“Desire?” Sherlock responds archly. “John, you can not imagine the things I have thought about doing to you. Think what a man of my intellect could do when he is completely focused. I want to taste you, to catalogue every single part of you, every gasp, every moan, every shiver. I want to crawl inside the secret spaces in your head, so deep that you can never get me out.”

“Oh God” moans John, his already rigid cock jumping. Sherlock surges forward and renews his exploration. When he is satisfied with mapping the texture of John’s mouth he moves downwards, littering John’s neck with soft kisses and gentle bites. Every few moments he stops, his mouth a few millimetres from John’s skin and just breathes, huffing short little breaths as though he was trying to isolate the fragrance of John himself. When Sherlock gives a sharp nip on the side of his jaw John realizes that he is on the verge of coming in his pants like a teenager.

“Sher- God if you don't slow down this is going to be over embarrassingly fast.”

With a dangerous glint in his eye, Sherlock leans closer to huff darkly in his ear “John, you have no idea how long I waited for this. For you to be mine. Consider yourself lucky that I am not going to bend you over the table and bugger you right here.”

With that John is lost, his balls tightening up, one grind of Sherlock’s knee on his crotch and he is there, sparks exploding in his vision, cock spurting pulse after pulse, soaking his pants. Sherlock groans as though pained, and as John begins to slide bonelessly down the wall, he feels Sherlock frantically thrust to completion against his leg. Seeing Sherlock like that, uncontrolled and utterly human is almost more than John can bear. If he had been even five years younger he would have gotten hard again. As it was his cock still gives a heroic twitch before falling quiescent again.

Long minutes later when they have caught their breath, Sherlock looks down at their damp groins with something like regret. “Pity, I would have liked to suck you off” he mutters absently. The giggles that burst from John’s throat are like the pealing of bells.

 

Diogenes Club (Six months after the event)

“We found him, sir. Just like you said we would. Per your instructions I secured the scene myself. He has been dead for approximately six months- cause of death a cranial fracture. Considering the timeframe, my working theory is that he was ascending the stairs during the event and when he lost consciousness he fatally struck his head. The only item of note I recovered was a laptop in one of the upstairs bedrooms. The prints on it were his and a woman named Abigail Ansell. She is a former CIA operative gone free-lance but, and here is the odd thing sir, our records show that she has been dead since 2010 and this model of laptop is only a year old.”

“No” Mycroft replies crisply.

“I don't understand, sir?”

“There was no laptop, no prints, and no body. Are we clear?”

“Understood, sir. Anything else you require?”

“No, Anthea, you can go.”

As the door swings shut she hears him murmur, almost to himself, “sentiment.”

 

Baker Street (Six months after the event)

Victoria is fast asleep in her cot, chubby fists drawn up close to her sweet face. John looks over her and feels a pang of love so sharp it hurts. Without a word, Sherlock takes him by the hand and leads him downstairs through the cathedral dimness of the flat.

Gently closing the door of the bedroom, Sherlock turns to face the window and with a deep breath drops his robe to puddle on the floor. The scar tissue on his back gleams like bone in the moonlight. Voice roughened by emotion he speaks.

“Did you know that Viktor Frankl once said ‘What is to give light must endure burning’?" Turning to face John once more his eyes dim and his firm lips shake but he continues. “I want you to know that it was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds to keep you safe. I am a selfish man and I could not live in a world without John Watson in it. These scars are just promises made flesh. My only regret and my deepest shame is that I hurt you. That day at the airfield I was going to tell you, I wanted you to hear me say it at least once. I love you, John. Now, on this night, I give you my words and my heart and I would like to give you this: my body.”

When the bottle of lube is pushed into his hands John accepts it like the gift it is.“Oh, Sherlock” he breathes, the words both an entreaty and a promise.

The bed is cool against his burning skin as he lays Sherlock down on dove gray sheets. “Are you sure?” Sherlock does not reply but instead pulls him into a kiss, knees falling open in invitation.

When John's slick finger breaches Sherlock for the first time he can barely hear the breathy groan over the timpani pounding of his own heart.

He is harder now than he can ever remember. John wants to plunge into that beckoning heat but instead he grits his teeth and begins to gently rock his finger in and out. When he feels the muscle flutter then loosen he pulls back, adds more lube and gently works a second finger in. By the time he has three fingers in, Sherlock’s whole body is dewed with sweat and trembling.

“John, par pitié – encule moi!”

John takes a deep breath. “Does that mean what I think it means? You know you are speaking French, right?

“Oh for pity’s sake John, where did you go to school? Just fuck me already.”

Hearing profanity from that posh mouth sends a jolt right to John’s groin. He carefully pulls his fingers out, and with trembling hands applies a generous coating of lube to his now straining cock. Never taking his eyes off Sherlock’s he lines himself up and begins to gently push in, one slow centimetre at at time, rocking back and forth as the slick passage gives way.

The tight heat is so intense that John has to stop a few times, afraid he will come. After what seems like an eternity, he is finally fully seated, his bollocks flush against that plush arse. Sherlock is panting now, pupils so dilated that only a sliver of iris can be seen.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, it feels…strange…full but not unpleasant” Sherlock says hesitantly.

“Alright love, let me try something. Can you put one leg up on my shoulder?”

Sherlock looks skeptical for a moment but complies, propping a long limb on John's bad side, leaving his unscarred shoulder to bear his weight.

“Ah, I see. You are attempting to find my prostate. Did you know the word ‘prostate’ is from the Greek ‘prostates’ literally meaning one who stands before. It is...” Before he can expound on what exactly ‘it is’ John gives a gentle thrust up and Sherlock gasps, his flagging erection rising up to tap damply on his stomach.

“Oh God, John, that is… that feels, oh, oh…” Another gentle thrust has Sherlock pulled taut as a bowstring, clutching at the sheets with clawed hands.

“Don't stop John, uhh, oh God please don't stop.”

John couldn't stop even if he wanted to. Sherlock is spread beneath him like a pornographic vision with his hair tousled and lips bitten red. His cock looks painfully hard, foreskin retracted, glans exposed and glistening. John looks down at him and knows no one had ever been as incandescently happy as he was right then. He starts pounding faster and faster spurred on by Sherlock’s grunts and rumbling moans.

“Oh John, I am going to, uh, I think I am going to…uh” Sherlock’s whole body suddenly goes rigid, muscle cording in his neck as he comes, ejaculate splattering pearly white all over his chest and neck.

His internal muscles clamping down on John’s cock are enough to push him over the edge and, hips stuttering, John comes so violently that that he sees stars.

When he finally comes back to himself sated and spent, he gives Sherlock a sleepy kiss before padding to the loo to get a wet flannel. After they are cleaned up, they lay back in the bed and John tenderly runs his fingers over the scars. Voices low, illuminated only by the glow of the streetlights seeping through their bedroom window, John bears witness as Sherlock explains how he got each one. As he presses a soft kiss to the back of his lover’s neck, upstairs a child, their child, begins to stir.

 

Authors Note:

Please NEVER have unprotected sex with a new partner unless you have both been tested. This is doubly true if you are a former IV drug user and/or were sleeping with a contract killer. We will assume the boys went for a full panel STI screening off-screen. Stay safe people! BV out *drops mic


End file.
